THIS is what I came to see.
USST made a total of 5 runs. All were spectacular. None, unfortunately, were fast enough to claim the prize. Their fastest run was 54 seconds. We’re not sure exactly how quick that was as we need to measure the ribbon. This will be done tomorrow. But we’re sure that the ribbon was not 108 meters, and therefore there was no way they could have met the 2 m/s requirement.
But the runs were spectacular. They actually picked up speed in a few runs the higher they climbed. It looks like they have some work to do on their tracking software, but I’m sure they’re going to be taking care of that.
So, unfortunately, the results were like last year – USST was just a few seconds too slow to claim the prize. But they greatly increased their speed over last year (approximately double) and are fulfilling NASA’s and Spaceward’s goal of advancing the state of the art.
Laser-powered climbs and carbon nanotube tethers were at the 2007 Space Elevator Games – how cool is that!!??!!
I don’t know how much blogging I’ll be doing over the next few days. I’m off to the Best Friends Animal Sanctuary – to fulfill a long-held ambition of mine. If I have any time, I’ll upload some of the videos and link to them. But I may not be able to blog again until I’m home on the weekend.
Either way, I’ll be sure and post the rest of the footage I’ve taken.
Thanks for reading…